The Portrait of a Mirror
Page 8
Ex-johns Hopkins lax
He’s already mentioned cross fit twice
Nice
Enough with the suspense
Are you trying to put me in the hospital too?
Relax
Canicide averted
Horace is going to be fine
He’s hooked up to an IV
Little dope fiend just needs to detox
I’m more worried about Eric TBH
Hyperhidrosis issue I think
And he’s not a very good actor
You know who else is having hyperhidrosis issues right now?
ME
FOR REASONS I THINK MAY BE FAIRLY OBVIOUS
Scare caps are never the answer, Dale
Control your passion, for unless it obeys, it commands you.
-Horace
Hah
When fools shun one fault they run into the opposite one
-Horace
Well played
Ok I’m sorry for the anxiety
I am only accepting this apology because he’s alive
Naturally, I understand
Horace is more or less the lifeblood of our friendship
Definitely worth the $5K this is costing me
Wait what
. . . $5K?!
You are lucky I have a rich husband
Oh am I?
Money is a handmaiden if you know how to use it
. . . but a mistress if you don’t. (nice try there)
Pretty good mistress IMO
Fidelity is the sister of justice.
Horace?
Horace.
The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds
-Horace
Shake it off
-Taylor Swift
Tis not sufficient to combine
Well-chosen words in a well-ordered line
None knows the reason why this curse
Was sent on him, this love of making verse.
Have you done anything since I left besides google
Horace quotes?
In peace, a wise man makes suitable preparation for war.
[fire emoji; 100 emoji]
It’s not like you haven’t kept up valiantly
Woof woof
Woof woof woof
-Horace
Lol
For real
He just woke up
You can stop calling shelters
What?
I already stopped . . .
When you said he was going to be ok
Well, we are now fully out of the woods
(I see what you did there)
(Did you see what I did there?)
Damnit!
So how are we going to get him back up here
Diana?
Going to lunch with Remington and Rich . . . you want anything from Circle 2shi?
Monday 2:46 PM
. . .
Hello?
Hi hi hi
You worry too much
It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire
Lol
Ok
Sorry
But I was in with prudence human
Hyman
And we are now best friends
Of course you are
I also have a pretty good understanding of what she’s looking for from us
Work wise I mean
Of course you do
So what happened?
Smuggled him back in my bag
He was still drowsy, thankfully
Waited for an empty elevator
Took him out once safely inside
Fluffed him up a bit
Told the floor admin we found him just lying around by himself
Technically not untrue
PH was beside herself with gratitude
Insisted on buying us lunch immediately
#win
Gourmet pretzels have dramatically improved Eric’s overall sell being Asian
Wellbeing again!
Not Asian!
Ducking autocorrect
Hahahaha
I give up
Coming up now
Monday 11:55 PM
Did you find your way back from the bar all right?
Yes
Thanks
Thanks for everything you did today
I’m fairly certain Eric is head over heels in love with you
Bah
Doubtful
I think I nearly gave him a heart attack
And Horace is one lucky dog
And a wise little fucker
All I did was follow his advice . . .
Carpe diem
How did we both miss that one earlier today?
Pretty unbelievable
You’re pretty unbelievable
Hah
Why do you laugh?
Change only the name and this story is about you
Horace?
Yas
[CONTACT NAME(S): “Pappas-Fidicia, Julian”]
Monday 11:48 AM
I’m currently at a Philadelphia veterinary office because one of the analysts almost killed our client’s service dog
No fucking way
I swear to god
Orange pomeranian
I thought this might amuse you
Also I thought about you this morning bc I had taco bell
Glory of glories!
You are too kind to the analyst
You’d throw him under the bus?
Indubitably
One of my favorite things is throwing people under the bus
How about Wes?
Jk
He’s not answering my texts though
Could you pls ask him to call me?
Sure
He’s kind of in a mood today
Showed up half an hour late this morning
So fucking annoying
But did you see my Instagram?
Priceless
[CONTACT NAME(S): “Range, Wes”]
Monday 8:31 AM
Arrived in Philly safely
What time do you wanna talk tonight
Monday 11:45 AM
Cool that works for me too
Hi sorry
Phone was off
Glad you got there ok
Will text when I get out of this mtg
Monday 1:10 PM
What is this large purchase alert I just got from Best
Friends Philadelphia?
Did you lose your credit card?
No
Legitimate transaction
What?
Holy shit, five thousaand dollars??!?!
What is this for?
Is this one of your jokes?
Can’t talk now
This is not okay
When can you talk?
Hello?
Monday 2:48 PM
Sorry client lunch
No joke
Sorry
Sorry?
Are you fucking kidding me?
There was an accident at work
What kind of accident?
Are you getting reimbursed?
I’d say gratitude is a kind of reimbursement, wouldn’t you?
I’m not falling for that
What the fuck happened?
Honestly, you’re making me not want to tell you
Call me now
Calm down
It’s not that big a deal
Don’t tell me to calm down
That’s a lot of money Diana
We’ve been through this
Like you’ve never thrown money at a problem
To make it go away
We’re not talking about me right now
We never do!
I don’t want to hear it
It was a life or death situation
Client’s service animal almost died
I have team dinner at 8
Want to talk at 11?
I have a dinner too
Don�
�t know how late it will go
Who is your dinner with?
And don’t think you can just change the subject like that
I see what you are trying to do
Does 11 work for you?
It won’t work
Why not?
WTF
Monday 3:17 PM
Can you talk now?
Monday 7:22 PM
Hello?
What do you want me to say
I don’t have time for your games and excuses right now
I’m calling you
Did you just send me to voicemail?
Unbelievable
You are the one who is unbelievable
Stop texting me
CHAPTER X.
It was Vivien’s idea to go to Lord Henry’s. wes reminded himself of this fact over and over. Before Julian left, it was already turning into one of those magical, instant-classic sorts of evenings, the kind that you hope will never end, that you mythologize and reminisce about even as they’re happening. Wes and Vivien had already stayed for two drinks past “another round” at the restaurant, the conversation seamlessly oscillating between personal histories and cultural recommendations, the waitstaff ’s hints growing increasingly less subtle that they’d like to close down. Until she’d mentioned Harry’s, Wes had grown, it seemed, permanently affixed to his chair—as if so long as he didn’t move, time couldn’t either. But Lord Henry’s offered something better: the ability to go back. Just like old times, Vivien had said. Harry’s was on Eighty-Fourth and Second—yes, totally out of the way for Wes, but no, no, of course he didn’t mind. He loved Harry’s. It was the only possible place to go.
Lord Henry’s Restaurant and Bar—Harry’s to those on the in—was a New York institution and the long-standing St. Elmo’s–style hangout of several elite New En gland preparatory schools. Rare was the Sill graduate who had never presented a fake ID at its doors, danced to Hall and Oates in its famed back room, or tested consumption limits around its red-and-white checkered-cloth tables. Rarer still was one who had not heard its mantra, superimposed on the giant, mirrored backsplash behind the bar:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A MORAL OR IMMORAL BAR. BARS ARE WELL STOCKED OR BADLY STOCKED. THAT IS ALL.
The place was so thoroughly imbued with adolescent excess and tales of charmingly inconsequent bad decisions that it already had an air of nostalgia by college, when plans to meet the Old Sill Crew at Harry’s after Thanksgiving or over Easter Weekend were made well in advance and hotly anticipated. By the time “everyone” returned to the city for jobs after graduation, it was a thoroughly legendary location. Well into Wes’s twenties, nights there still invariably struck that poetic balance between promise and stasis, surprise and predictability. It was a place where you met new people, but no one with whom you didn’t share a few Facebook friends. It was a place where you did old things and felt young.
More than once after a long, enchanting night at Harry’s, Wes’s heavily compromised senses had been so firmly embedded in the past that he’d accidentally walked to the Seventy-Fourth Street town house, fully remembering only when he got to the door—no longer a dark wood but a brilliant vermilion—that it had been seized and sold. It was a painful reorientation, looping back uptown to his grandparents’ apartment on Fifth. But it was a melancholy, wistful pain; a pain that was not only bearable, but secretly irresistible; a pain to be subconsciously baited and cherished and lingered in, one that validated the sentimentality Wes felt toward himself as the wholly sympathetic tragic hero of his own life.
And that was part of the problem, wasn’t it? The pleasure of the pain? Wes’s genuine devastation at the time of his father’s suicide had been swiftly, uncomfortably quelled by the startling material benefits it mobilized. He’d been anxious about returning to Sill after his father’s funeral; Wes knew the satisfaction others got out of watching the mighty fall. But his roommate had welcomed him with a hug so warm and affectionate as to qualify for some kind of award in adolescent male bravery, and Jack Dorset—just an acquaintance, really—stopped by to tell Wes how sorry he was, and did Wes and his mom want to join his family in Aspen for Thanksgiving? At the Senior Council meeting, Marnie Davenport insinuated that if Ainsley was not adequately comforting Wes in his time of need, he might count on her instead, if he knew what she meant, and Kate Manningham borrowed Ingrid Cheng’s phone after lights-out to imply the same. The whispers he overheard about himself didn’t include so much as a whiff of derision. His father’s crimes hadn’t damaged Wes’s golden-boy reputation—if anything, they’d made it impossible to resent him for it. Wes suddenly understood why, in the winter of their fourth form year, Portia McLaughlin had lied and told everyone she had cancer. There was a seductive, asymmetric quality to sympathy: so many reasons you might need it, yet such a narrow moral purview for eliciting the real, true, genuine thing.
The chilling thought had infiltrated the manor of his mind like a bloated rat squeezing through an impossibly tiny crack, violating the memory of his father, the pain of his loss, the concern for his mother, the kindness of his teachers and friends, the mature appropriateness of his own behavior: No one would be asking him to Aspen if his father was out on bail from Riker’s Island. Only Diana—years later—had fully, unnervingly understood this: that in very real, measurable ways, Wes had been fortunate his father committed suicide. Charlie Range had bequeathed his son something far more valuable than his lost inheritance: he’d bequeathed him a sympathetic story. It was not a coincidence, that he’d married the only person who had ever seen this clearly—who had loved him not because of, but in spite of it. But it was also an exhilarating cognitive pleasure to indulge, on occasion, in the great myth of himself, and tonight Vivien Floris was divinely alight with his personal narrative momentum.
How enticing, even in the happiest of times: to experience the smooth, varnished version of yourself, to control it like a video game, watching your simulacrum perform with such uncanny fidelity you can almost believe it’s the real you. And yet, on a different tonight, Wes would’ve enjoyed this sensation without latching on to it; he would have savored his final drink and walked summarily home. His heightened susceptibility to Vivien’s version of himself on this particular evening could be drawn back to Diana, of course, but not due to some remarkable singularity in the day. No, their interactions had been all too characteristic of their fundamental stalemate. Recall that it was not some grand catalyst or a rogue bad decision, but many (many) tiny compounding ones, systemically incentivized and magnified and reinforced, that ultimately allowed a nuclear reactor to blow at Chernobyl.
Wes hailed a cab and helped Vivien in, forgetting, somehow, that he was supposed to subsequently let go of her hand. It was polite to help her in, and helping her in had required holding her hand, and it wasn’t like she’d exactly remembered to let go either, but upon the realization he blushed and reclaimed it, rubbing the back of his neck bashfully. Vivien responded by tossing her hair from right to left and turning her gaze to the window, exposing her profile in a manner Wes instinctively felt to be designed for his benefit. What a benefit it was! The streetlights fell on her cheekbones and jawline and fingers and kneecaps in rapid succession—now, there were some knees that belonged in a museum, he thought. He just watched her for a while, his heartbeat quickening. It was Vivien’s idea to go to Lord Henry’s. Wes slyly poked the knee closest to him.
—These little things look cold.
—Oh, do they?
—Yes, frozen. I’m legitimately concerned.
Wes furrowed his eyebrows in exaggerated alarm, poking her knees from several new angles, examining them in mock examination. They were cool and smooth and perfect. Vivien twittered with delight, and Wes felt further emboldened. Suddenly locking her eyes in alarm, he wrapped his hand around her right knee with a dramatic gasp.
—Are these insured by Lloyd’s of London?
—No, she laughed. State Farm.
Now they were laughi
ng together. He let his hand slightly—as if accidentally—travel half an inch north, giving her knee-thigh a squeeze that could technically be defended as playful and friendly but it probably wouldn’t hold up in court. Vivien didn’t move. Her inaction felt almost like a dare. Wes held her gaze, but removed his hand slowly, almost extravagantly, intensely analyzing her face. He wasn’t imagining it. She wanted him, certainly. He knew it. Precisely the way he wanted her.
—Do you want my sweater? Here. It’s not your fault, he said lightly. I’ve heard Sillian Rails are frequently chilly. According to legend, it’s due to their metallically icy hearts.
—Oh please, said Vivien, I was never really one of those girls. Wes grinned, preparing himself to confess.
—Sure you were, he said. You were always my favorite one of those girls, actually . . . I had a pretty massive crush on you back in the day.
—What? No you didn’t.
—Sure I did.
—Um, I had a crush on you.
—I didn’t even think you knew who I was.
—Well, I did.
—Come on, no you didn’t.
—I did!
It was all so clumsy and trite and exactly what he’d hoped she’d say. The whole interchange felt a bit like a scene from the undiscovered sequel to a John Hughes movie, and he was dying to go back and watch the original. He stopped laughing and looked away for a second before meeting her eyes again with renewed purpose.
—Why didn’t you ever say anything?
—I was shy, Vivien said. You?
—Uh, you were you.
—What does that mean?
—You know perfectly well what it means.
He knew she did. Perfect understanding was transparently written on her face. But she wanted to hear him say it. It was exhilarating, having the power to deny her the pleasure.
—You’re going to have to be more specific, she said.
—Specifically . . . trailed Wes, returning to levity, helping her out of the car. Specifically, I would like another drink.
—How decadent! she said with a silly little accent, taking his hand.
—Darling, he said, this is New York.
For a Monday, Harry’s was packed. It was commencement week at both Columbia and NYU, and several loosely organized groups of euphoric red-faced graduates in seersucker shorts and white sundresses, frat tanks, and plastic neon-armed “Class of 2015” sunglasses dominated the scene, with a few Upper East Side private school kids and predatory hedge-fund types filling in around the edges. Vivien managed to squeeze to the front of the bar, returning with two beers and an abandoned pair of NYU shades that she promptly donned, giving Wes a victorious look in the mirrored backsplash before turning and making her way back to him.